wer.

Miss Katherine has gone away. Gone to stay two months, anyhow. Maybe
three.

Her Army brother, the one who is a Captain, has been sent to Texas, and
his wife and children were taken ill as soon as they got there.

Of course, they sent for Miss Katherine; that is, asked her by telegraph
if she wouldn't come. She went. And she'll be going to somebody all her
life, for she's the kind that is turned to when things go wrong.

Miss Webb is awful worried. She says a cool head and a warm heart are
always worked to death, and the person who has them is forever on call.

Miss Katherine has them.

She had to go, of course. We were not sick, except a few snifflers. We
didn't exactly need her, and her brother did; but oh the difference her
being away makes!

Three months of doing without her is like three months of daylight and
no sunlight. It's like things to eat that haven't any taste; like a room
in which the one you wait for never comes.

I am back in No. 4, in one of the thirteen beds. My body goes on doing
the same things. Gets up at five o'clock. Dresses, cleans, prays, eats,
goes to school, eats, sews, plays, eats, studies, goes to bed. And
that's got to be done every day in the same way it was done the day
before.

But it's just my body that does them. Outside I am a little machine
wound up; inside I am a thousand miles away, and doing a thousand other
things. Some day I am going to blow up and break my inside workings, for
I wasn't meant to run regular and on time. I wasn't.

What was I meant for? I don't know. But not to be tied to a rope. And
that's what I am. Tied to a rope. If I were a boy I'd cut it.

* * * * *

I am almost crazy! A wonderful thing has happened. I am so excited my
breathing is as bad as old Miss Betsy Hays's. I believe I know who I am.

My heart is jumping and thumping and carrying on so that it makes my
teeth chatter; and as I can't tell anybody what I've heard, I am likely
to die from keeping it to myself.

I am _not_ going to die until I find out. If I did I would be as bad off
in heaven as on earth. Even an angel would prefer to know something
about itself.

I'm like Miss Bray now. I'm counting on going to heaven. Otherwise it
wouldn't make any difference who I was, as one more misery don't matter
when you're swamped in miserableness. I suppose that's what hell is:
Miserableness.

What are you when you don't go to heaven?

But that's got n